Telephoto Lens Focal Length Comparison

Although I have already done a focal length comparison from 12mm to 500mm focal length before, I decided to do it once again for telephoto lenses. I receive quite a few emails from our readers, asking about telephoto lenses and focal lengths, specifically whether a focal length of a lens is going to be sufficient for bird and wildlife photography. The below images should give you a pretty good idea about field of view when using particular focal lengths, from 70mm all the way to 1200mm:

The above images are not cropped in post-production and represent equivalent focal lengths relative to 35mm. The longest field of view of the 1200mm shot was captured with the Nikon 200-400mm f/4.0 + TC-20E III TC @ 400mm (800mm effective) on a DX body, which is equivalent to 1200mm. The shortest focal length was captured with the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II at 70mm.

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About Nasim Mansurov

Nasim Mansurov is the author and founder of Photography Life, based out of Denver, Colorado. He is recognized as one of the leading educators in the photography industry, conducting workshops, producing educational videos and frequently writing content for Photography Life. You can follow him on Instagram, 500px and Facebook. Read more about Nasim here.

Aaron, an EXIF viewer can only show the info if it is available :) The distance information is typically reported by a lens and if you are shooting with teleconverters and shooting over a certain distance, the information can fail to come through. If that happens, the camera will show a really large number or “unknown” for distance.

Changchun Richen Optronics Co., Ltd. is a professional enterprise, which located in Chinese optical base-Changchun City. It is mainly engaged in manufacturing and marketing of optical lens, since established in 2000, it has been a professional manufacturing with large scale producing ability.

Wow, thanks! Just the info I was looking for. Can you explain what you mean by 800mm effective with a 200-400mm lens? How do you get a 1200 mm focal length with a 200-400mm lens? Thanks! I will definitely buy my telephoto lens by clicking on the B&H link on your website!

thanks, nasim. great comparison. i’ve been a fan for reading reviews on your website regularly.

@christine: you can get 800mm effective from a 200-400mm lens by using TC-20E III just like nasim wrote before. TC-20E is a 2 times teleconverter combine with 400mm focal length it becomes 800mm and when 800mm lens mounted at DX cameras (crop factor 1.5x body, series other than D700, D800, D3, D3x, D3s, D4) then it becomes 1.5 x 800mm = 1200mm lens.

Thanks Raymond. I understand the teleconverter, Nasim was saying 400 mm is 800 mm effective. What I don’t understand is why this is 1200 mm equivalent… What is the mechanism? Is it that those cameras are at normal lens at 50mm rather than 35 mm?

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